As indicated in its sub-title, this work provides a comprehensive look at Pacific War at the highest levels, policy, grand strategy, economics, and particularly the personalities, political and military, who directed the war.

A trio of chapters setting the deep background are followed by a series of chapters that unfold chronologically, and cover specific campaigns or aspects the war, including strategic direction, economic mobilization, the submarine and air offensives, and the surrender of Japan. Operational developments are treated only in the broadest outline, and tactical and technical matters hardly at all, which is appropriate given the purpose of the book.

The book successfully synthesizes a good deal of recent scholarship on the war, and is likely to be of use to anyone with an interest in the Pacific Theater.